Chapter 38: Quillfire Massacre — The Rewrite Sovereign Descends
Mercy is a word I redacted in my first draft.
—Kael Draven
Location: Skyvault Citadel — The Inkline Bastion, Day of Crimson Ascension
The sky bled sideways.
Clouds reversed into ink, blotting out sunlight in coils of rewritten wrath. Horns meant for celebration blew instead like funerary echoes across the trembling stone bastions of Skyvault.
And from that bleeding sky, a single figure descended.
Kael Draven.
Crimson Crown atop his head.
Godspine Quill in his right hand.
Behind him: silence.
Ahead of him: an army of Eighty Thousand Correctors, divine paladins forged from grammar, absolutes, and self-righteous edits.
Commander Aratheus: "You have trespassed sacred margins, sovereign. We correct you now."
Kael raised his left hand.
No word. No spell.
Just motion.
The Writheborne Colossus unfurled behind him like the skeletal remains of an unspeakable stanza. It towered, now clad in glyph-plate forged from forsaken languages.
Massacre Begins: The Storm of Narrative Cleave
Kael whispered:
"Turn their story into ash."
The Colossus obeyed.
Its arm swept across the front lines—five thousand Correctors evaporated. Not killed. Not wounded. Just removed from the reader's mind, like forgotten characters in a discarded book.
Kael advanced, each step rewriting the ground beneath him.
Walls of defense turned into plot holes.
Spells cast by the defenders reversed into authorship fees.
Aratheus: "Hold your lines! Remember the margin seals!"
The soldiers tried.
But Kael flicked the Quill.
Their memories rearranged. Friends became traitors. Orders contradicted. Some laughed while bleeding. Others screamed for enemies who didn't exist.
"You live in an outline. I'm the final manuscript."
Kael plunged the Quill into the chest of a paladin.
The man unraveled into adjectives.
Aerial Assault: The Paragraph Bombardment
Heaven's Scribes rained scripture from flying galleons. Divine fonts poured from the sky like molten calligraphy.
Kael raised his palm.
His shadow split into twenty Rewrite Avatars, each acting from different drafts of his will.
They surged upward, intercepting the galleons.
Explosions of meaning tore the sky as Kael's avatars stabbed syllables into hulls. Galleons plummeted, leaving trails of misused commas and orphaned clauses.
One scribe begged for mercy in Old Script.
Kael's avatar rewrote his tongue into silence.
Final Push: The Red Ink Flood
Kael summoned the Scarlet Rewrite Seal, burning it into the air.
From the cracked heavens poured rivers of red ink.
The Correctors drowned, screaming in semi-colons and exclamations. Some tried to pray.
Their prayers were denied.
Kael had already deleted their gods.
"Your editors should've read fine print."
He walked through the battlefield, untouched, as the last defender crawled toward him—a young acolyte with a trembling quill.
Acolyte: "W-why...?"
Kael crouched.
Touched the child's forehead.
"Because your chapter was written on borrowed time."
The boy blinked once.
Then vanished—converted into a footnote in Kael's legacy.
Final Scene: Aftermath of Absolute Rewrite
Only silence remained.
Skyvault Citadel, the bastion of the sacred editors, now cracked and soaked in metaphorical blood.
Lady Vaeloria stepped from the smoke.
Xhiva followed, heels echoing against shattered doctrine.
Xhiva: "How many did you leave breathing?"
Kael: "None worth a sequel."
They stood amid ruin.
The Crimson Crown pulsed.
And far across the worlds, a forbidden name stirred awake…